The Unsavory Truth: Stories from Frederick Crow ’51, Vietnam War POW and American Hero

Today I shook the hand of my alma mater’s most decorated alum.

Was it Bill Nye ’77? Bill Maher ’78? Maybe Keith Olbermann ’79?

Well it couldn’t have been any of these celebrities, because they’ve never filled a room with less than 10 people delivering a keynote address.

So it had to have been a veteran.

If you’re still lost on who it might have been, allow me to share you a brief history lesson our education system never provided you with.

This afternoon, the brothers of Pi Kappa Alpha – Beta Theta Chapter – hosted Cornell Alum, and Pi Kappa Alpha brother, retired US Air Force Colonel Frederick Crow ’51 to speak at an open-to-the public event in honor of Veteran’s Day, and to pay tribute to an American hero who once spent time here on the hill.

The event included a three-person panel, made up of Colonel Crow’s son Jeff Crow, Cornell alum and Pi Kappa Alpha brother Logan Cheek, as well as current Cornell Junior and Pi Kappa Alpha brother Benjamin Krapels ’17. The panel directed discussion to focus on Colonel Crow’s early life, experience at Cornell, and military heroism.

Growing up on a Naval Base at a little place called Pearl Harbor, Frederick Crow would first hear the call of duty at the rightful age of 15 on December 7th 1941, experiencing the ‘day that would live in infamy,’ first hand.

His family would then move back stateside to Massachusetts, where he would enroll in high school, and subsequently drop out to try to join the tail end of the war still lingering in the Pacific, with the Army Reserves.

Unable to see any action, Crow would return to Massachusetts and finish high school before enrolling at Cornell. He playfully notes how he was unable to earn enrollment at Harvard, Yale, or Dartmouth (among other similar schools), so he opted for the only school that offered him a spot – our “noble alma mater.”

Not even able to walk at his own graduation ceremony in 1951, he was straight off to flight school, and would “get his wings” by the summer of 1952.
Crowe would then commence a lengthy, 30-year military career, taking him places from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Germany, to a place called North Vietnam.

On Easter Sunday 1967 near the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, Colonel Crow was shot down leading an air raid on North Vietnamese targets. His comrades would go on to make it back to base in good health, but he unfortunately, would not for over six years.

For six years Colonel Crow would be held a prisoner of war in essentially the Auschwitz-equivalent of the Vietnam War – the ‘Hanoi Hilton.’ For six years he would be beaten and tortured, starved and interrogated. For three years of his captivity, he was placed in solitary confinement – legs bound at the ankles barring him from any movement.

During his time in captivity, Crow would befriend a young Naval officer by the name of John McCain. The pair, along with their comrades, would communicate by coded ‘taps’ on their cell walls.

Crow and his contemporaries would eventually devise a plan to have a young sailor who was captured, falling off a ship off the coast of Hanoi, to play the role of a madman in the effort to get him released from imprisonment. Eventually the young sailor would receive such release, after having had memorized, according to Colonel Crow, over 500 American POW’s by name and status. He would then relay this crucially important information on to the Pentagon following his return home.

By 1973, Colonel Crow, and his brothers in captivity, were released from Hanoi, and had made it back stateside. Crow would return to his wife and children, all aged by six years since their last interactions.

An American hero, Crow would then go on to earn the Legion of Merit, two Distinguished Flying Crosses and two Silver Stars, according to a recent article in the Ithaca Journal, making him the most decorated alum in Cornell history.

So that’s the story – albeit the short version, but why had I not known any of it until hours ago at an event that drew hardly even 10 people – of which the majority weren’t even Cornell students?

The reason: apathy for anything other than rainbows, unicorns, and happy things on our college campuses.
Our universities choose to idolize academic, literary, and political greats who once walked their campuses – yet leave those who served something greater than just a social cause or a ideological movement out to dry; to speak in the back room of the building with a giant auditorium and leave a fraternity to foot the bill for an event that hadn’t even the slightest chance at drawing a crowd even before it was ever thought up as an idea.

Frederick Crow has done more for the people of this university than most other alumni will – or have – over 5 lifetimes. He, and veterans like him, remind us that freedom comes at a cost. And like it or not, that cost is the blood of young men (and women) who fight our nation’s wars and make the sacrifices necessary to ensure our safety and liberties back at home.

So this Veteran’s Day, thank a Veteran, or five or twelve. Heck, do this every day.

Today I shook the hand of an American hero. He wasn’t a community organizer, a lawyer, a politician, or a business man, and that’s too bad, because any of the other titles above would’ve granted me more ‘likes’ on Facebook, more ‘retweets’ on Twitter, and more nods from faculty.